Week 9

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The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.

–Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

   Poe explored the extremes of ratiocination, and of madness, responding in part to the desire of readers for the darkly romantic in literature.  He deplored the mysticism of the American Transcendentalist tradition, putting physical rot, disease, and gore front and center.  His narrator-protagonists often declaim their honesty and basic decency in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, seemingly glorying in the recall of their descent into hellish madness and cruelty.  And we readers love the horror tale, as contemporary Stephen King reminds us, for it assures us we occupy a more or less sane and good middle ground.  There is a kind of humility, it seems to me, in the work of Poe and Hawthorne, in being so strongly connected to the evils that assail us in our weakness, our dependencies, addictions, hypocrisy, and sheer ignorance and folly. The black veil taken by Father Hooper in Hawthorne's story is a symbol of the haunted aspect of human consciousness, and a sign that even the most godly, cannot escape the proverbial dark. But through it, and beside it, shines the light.  The intersection of opposites plays a strong role in romantic art.

So to Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), one of my favorite short story writers, for her homely details and refusal to play to expectations, and for bringing the voices of the past to life through the vernacular of African Americans of the early 20th century.


Homework:  Read "Puppy," by George Saunders. Work on final project, due week 10 or 11.